“This does change our outlook. We didn’t plan on losing any of you before arriving at Eden. Without Kaya, we have only three female competitors remaining. Our on-planet projections show that at least three are necessary for optimal team function. We believe this would happen organically in the competition, but Kaya’s death has forced our hand.”
I’m too tired, too lost to understand. Roathy slams a fist into the table. The others look on edge, so Defoe goes on.
“Jazzy, Isadora, Azima—you will move on to Eden.”
The three of them look shocked. Azima wasn’t likely to lose, but Jazzy and Isadora were in the bottom four. It was going to be hard enough for me to catch one of them after my punishment. Now I can’t even do that. I glance up at the scoreboard:
My points have been subtracted. Babel’s penalty for my guilt is such a small thing. I’m just nine thousand points behind Roathy, but it feels more like ninety thousand. If Kaya’s not here, how can I possibly go on?
For a second, I’m worried about winning, about money, about home. The second burns by quickly, though, as I remember Kaya’s crossed-out name on the scoreboard. I hate Defoe for turning our eyes to the competition instead of to her. I hate that we’re thinking about beating each other instead of honoring the person we’ve lost. The person I killed. It’s the kind of hate and anger that can’t be turned into anything else, that can’t be converted into fuel.
As the week goes by, I lose everything. The swimming tank makes me feel like I’m drowning. The classroom lectures are a distant voice. In the pit, I can’t force myself to throw a punch. Bilal sits beside me at every meal.
“If you want to talk about it,” he says, “I’m here.”
He doesn’t dig deeper when I shake my head. He doesn’t ask about the points I lost or what happened. He just stays by my side and honors Kaya’s absence with his silent presence. I can barely find the words to thank him.
Defoe is the only one who knows what happened, and he’s the only one who carries on like nothing has changed. I realize that, for him, nothing has changed. I file it away under A for Asshole. He escorts us down to the Rabbit Room on yet another endless day in what feels like an endless week. I stand there like the dead until Jaime says something about needing a new strategy. I burst out laughing. It’s abrupt and frightening. I can’t help but belly laugh, though, as I remember one of the last things Kaya told me before she died. Her new strategy for the Rabbit Room.
“All right,” I say. “This is what we’re going to do. For Kaya.”
Azima, Isadora, Jaime, and I line up near the center of the room. Defoe swipes his data pad and the room churns to life. The digital forest flickers on the wall screen and the race begins. Isadora swings over to the far left as we planned. She sets a steady pace as Jaime, Azima, and I transform our nyxian rings into thick handheld shields. As the pace picks up, we drift toward the center of the room, where the mesh tennis net divides us from the other team. On my signal, we all leap over it and into enemy territory.
“For Kaya!” I shout.
My battle cry is echoed, and the other team looks terrified as we come crashing into their formation. It’s chaos. I ram Longwei and kick my legs out to trip Bilal. Jazzy almost ducks away, but Azima snags her by the arm, and the whole group falls in a tangle. Someone’s foot hooks around my neck, but all I can do is laugh as we slide helplessly to the back wall. The room lights up like fireworks.
Isadora’s still running for our team, though, and a few seconds later the tread floor stops.
Defoe looks radiant, clapping as he walks over to us.
“Finally, someone is thinking outside the box.”
He’s looking at me, like it was my plan.
“It was Kaya,” I say firmly. “She came up with it.”
“For Kaya,” Azima repeats.
She slings an arm around me and the others crowd close. They speak the phrase as we all leave the Rabbit Room together. That evening, I linger in the multipurpose room. I’m afraid to go back to our room without Kaya. I’m afraid to wake up to my first Sabbath without her as my teammate, as my friend. The others eventually retreat, though, and I’m forced back to where I first met her.
My suit glows and the door slides open. I go to my own room and start undressing. The mirror doesn’t indicate that my heart’s been broken. It doesn’t have a measure for my hopelessness either. It just ticks off the beats and counts the calories, like those are any way to measure life. I sit on the edge of the bed until I hear knocks. The sound echoes through the walls. I drag my suit across the room and scan it, and the door whisks open.
My friends come storming inside.
Katsu holds an open carton of ice cream. “Sleepover!” he shouts.
Bilal is carrying pillows and blankets. He tosses them down and gives me a hug. Jazzy, Azima, and Jaime file into the room behind him. “Thanks,” I whisper. “Thank you so much.”
Bilal nods over to Jaime. “It was his idea.”
Jaime looks over and nods once. “We didn’t want you to be alone.”
His kindness levels me. I reach out a hand and he shakes it.
“I’m sorry about everything,” I tell him. “All that stuff at the beginning.”
He shakes his head. “It’s nothing. It’s in the past.”
After Jaime explained his idea to the others, Katsu went down to the kitchens and stole the ice cream. Bilal found movies to watch and Jazzy gathered the extra pillows.
The night blurs. We eat out of a massive carton of ice cream and watch old Disney cartoons that are in all the wrong languages. Everyone honors Kaya, saying something nice about her. I’m surprised how often she offered her kindness to the others. I selfishly believed she only spoke to me that way, but in just a few months she helped each of them when they needed it.
I fall asleep on the floor next to Bilal. Katsu sleeps beside him, snoring like a plane engine. Jazzy and Azima sleep on my bed, while Jaime retreats to the couch. Kaya’s absence brings the broken boys and girls together, even if it’s just for a night.
“This isn’t some punk reporter digging for cash,” Roman explains. “They published it in Time. Some of our objectives are already toast, on principle.”
Our coordinator of Earthside operations runs a hand through already disheveled hair. Roman Beckett is all hot air and urgency. He made partner because some of his initial operations decisions thrust Babel Communications into its current ascent. Bright fires can still burn out, though, and this mistake might be unforgivable.
I have the article pulled up on my data pad. Twenty-three sprawling pages that document the lives and background of every single competitor we recruited. The information is almost as good as the information we had. All in all, the intelligence is stunning. The fact that they tracked us on every single house visit reeks of betrayal. Roman’s job is to flush out defectors and keep the company’s secrets in the pockets and vaults where they belong. He didn’t do that, not this time.
In the digital square above him, Katherine Ford sweeps a sandy lock behind her right ear. She’s our technology queen and development specialist. Roman has spent the last twenty minutes trying to ease some of his burden onto her shoulders, and she doesn’t looked pleased.
“Our cryptography programs were running,” Katherine explains. “This happened on your side of things, Roman. Don’t try to implicate any of my departments in this.”
“I know that, Katherine,” Roman snaps back. “They did it old-school to avoid detection. Actual film. Typewriters too. A nanosecond upload and straight to digital press.”
“Bunch of quacks,” David Requin croaks. “Nothing better to do.”
Requin. He’s a cold man, as cold as they come. I resist rubbing my eyes. Too much time staring at screens. This meeting shouldn’t even be happening. We were still a few months away from our next call, but the emergency demanded our attention. Now the whole world knows we’ve taken recruits into space. Every major news network is running special segments with the
ir own angles on what we’re doing and what devious webs connect the children we’ve recruited.
“Quacks?” I ask quietly. “Just because someone spied on us for once, that makes them quacks? You’re being narrow-minded again, Requin.”
Requin just shrugs. “You know what I mean. All it does is feed the junkies who get off on this kind of thing. They want to pull back the curtain and see the wizard. Good for them. They don’t know that we have twenty curtains and twenty wizards. We’ve got so many trapdoors, sometimes even I forget where they are. So I say go ahead. Let them think they know the half of it. It doesn’t change any of our plans. Don’t forget, we’re all alone out here.”
Roman nods along, but Katherine’s eyes are sharper. She sees what I see. This article isn’t a bruise that will fade; it’s a sore that will fester.
“You understand what this means, don’t you?” I ask. “They knew enough about us to know what we would know and how we would know it and how they could avoid us. Quacks? They sound more like prospective employees to me.”
Roman snorts. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Of course I’m kidding. Not every problem can be paid to go away. This article puts a microscope on us, Roman. It’s an open door to other companies too. If two paycheck journalists can put a bag on our head and take a few swings, what do you think someone with an actual bankroll will try to pull?”
Roman doesn’t snort this time. He huffs an “I’ll handle it.”
“No, you won’t.” I tap my data pad. A blue circle appears in the corner of their screens. “I’ve attached the public explanation, answers to expected questions, and an objective board for our broadcasting team over the next few weeks. First step, we start fast-tracking the financial benefits to the families. Let’s get some press on our generosity. The implementation can start tomorrow.”
Roman looks furious, but all three of them tap their screens to download. Green arrows race around blue circles, and the documents duplicate onto hard drives. They scroll through the abstract summaries. Requin’s the first to finish. “Excellent. Well, that settles that.”
Katherine nods. “Next time, I’d prefer Roman solve his own problems.”
“Agreed. I have my own circus to run,” I say.
Roman’s neck is bright red, but he keeps his mouth shut for once. His first smart move today. He’s not dead in the water, not yet. But he should have seen the journalists and he should have sniffed out what was going on. When you get lazy, mistakes happen. We’ve all made mistakes in the past, but these days they seem to be happening only to Roman. Babel doesn’t shelter the weak. We amputate, rebuild, and conquer. Roman knows that, and he knows how close he is to being cut away.
“Speaking of circuses,” Requin says, dropping the subject with a grin. “We’re ready for you, Marcus. The Waterway is fully operable now. Hell of a fun ride, even for an old man.”
I can’t help but smile. “You better not be cheating.”
Requin snorts a laugh. “Don’t need to cheat, old friend. Not this time.”
“Care to make a wager on that?” I ask dangerously.
The question wipes the grin off his face. Our bets are planet-sized. Just two years ago Roman lost a stable of Picassos to Katherine at the Kentucky Derby. I’ve never lost a bet, because I make a habit of knowing the outcomes before I set my money on the table.
Requin pushes back. “How about a specific bet?”
“How specific?” I ask.
“Picking the commander.”
Katherine smiles. “Can I get in on this action?”
“No, not fair,” I answer. “This is a bet for half-blind mice.”
“Fine,” Katherine replies. “I’ll leave you two to your gambling. I’ve a company to run.”
Her screen blinks black. Roman follows suit, thankful for the excuse to leave, and it’s Requin and me, alone on the call. Every minute is costing millions, so I cut to the chase.
“Erone nearly broke free of his bonds. A couple of the recruits swiped an access card. He got his hands on some nyxia, but I was there in time to stop it. We lost Kaya.”
“Maybe you should be more careful,” Requin suggests unhelpfully. “If he’d managed to overcome you, he would have torn the ship to pieces.”
“Doubtful,” I say. “Knowing Erone, he would have followed the flight pattern back so that he could tear your ship to pieces. He’s fond of me. He hates you.”
“Well, I did abduct him,” Requin laughs.
“Anything else?”
Requin frowns. “Wait, what about our bet?”
“No, thanks,” I say. “I don’t make bets I know I’m going to lose.”
“And how could you know that?”
“I’m up early every morning.” I let the word hang in the air. Requin chuckles like a child caught stealing snacks. “You know how the saying goes, early birds and all that.”
“So you admit defeat?”
“Yes. At least until I can find the aces I normally keep up my sleeves.”
“Until then.” Requin nods, and the connection goes black.
DAY 188, 7:48 A.M.
Aboard Genesis 11
Vandemeer waits in the living room. For a few weeks after Kaya’s death, he and I were lost to each other. He neglected his duties and I neglected mine. We seemed to snap out of it together. His allegiance to Babel became secondary to me. For Kaya, we fight together.
I’m pretty sure that Vandemeer thinks if he can get me to Eden, he’ll be able to forgive his failure in protecting her. I don’t want to tell him it won’t work. It never works that way. Guilt like this doesn’t leave. You can set it aside, but it’s always there, waiting.
After warm-ups, I walk over to Kaya’s door and bow my head. I don’t know Jesus or God all that well, but I imagine we’re closer to them up here in space. Maybe they can hear me, even if we’re not on speaking terms. I say the same words every day.
Vandemeer eyes me afterward. “What do you pray for?”
“Rest.”
“Who do you pray to?”
“I don’t know.”
Breakfast comes and goes. We all treat each other like friends until we’re forced to be enemies. Going back and forth is more tiring than just hating each other. Sometimes I think Longwei has it right. He doesn’t waste time on friendships. Maybe that’s why he’s so good. All his energy goes into treating us like enemies. Maybe it’s easier that way.
But Kaya’s death changed me, changed everything. I can’t go back to cold competition and ruthless winning. I don’t want to go back to that. Kaya made us laugh and smile. She offered help to anyone who asked for it, even those who were afraid to ask. For her, I try to be better. Bilal keeps offering to talk about it, but I can’t share my shame with him.
The grueling months have transformed every competition. New strategies, new trends, new ways to get hurt. Most of the rooms carry Kaya’s legacy with them. She had a brain that broke each challenge down into compartments and solved them like simple puzzles. Watching the others copy her tactics after all this time makes the hole in my heart a little bigger, a little deeper.
Following routine, we make our way down to the pit. At this point, everyone’s deadly. Practice makes perfect, and Babel has made us all effective killers. The only question is why.
Babel’s other edict has changed things too. The girls are immune now, guaranteed spots. Vandemeer has been hung up on it for months. He doesn’t think the new ruling’s ethical. He spent weeks combing through my contracts to try to get the ruling overturned. But there are so many hidden twists gridlocked in Babel’s clauses that he eventually gave up. I don’t bother worrying about why Babel pushed the girls through, or whether or not it was fair.
None of that matters. Babel spoke. And when Babel speaks, the rules are set in stone. All I can do is try to win in spite of them. It’s not easy. Isadora no longer has to fight for herself. Instead, she fights for Roathy. Against the other girls she slacks off. But against us she fights t
ooth and nail for each point. The two of them keep to themselves most days now.
Overhead, Kaya’s avatar flickers briefly onto the screen. It takes eight seconds for the forfeit to register and the points to add into Azima’s score. Eight seconds is long enough to take me back to that bright room full of dark things. I shake the vision out of my head as Kaya’s avatar is replaced. I hate that my image of her has slowly shifted to this digital, Babel-made projection. She was more than that, more than they could ever capture with pixels and lights.
Next up, Longwei and Bilal.
For a few weeks, Longwei tried to carve a new rival out of Bilal. He wanted to go to war with my friend over Azima’s affections. But there’s only so much hate you can build up against someone who won’t hate you back. Any chance of solidifying a rivalry was ended by Azima’s new belief that the Adamites could be the most eligible bachelors down on Eden. It took a few days to help Bilal get over his heartbreak at hearing that pronouncement.
Our first- and third-place contestants salute at center. Defoe gives the signal and Bilal presses, only to have Longwei melt into the backdrop. Our eyes follow the action as Longwei trampolines up to the second level and darts out of sight. From our vantage point, we can still see the top of his head bobbing along the outer rim. Then Longwei trampolines up to the third level. Ducking low, he circles back along the square, padded ridge. Bilal’s making his cautious way along the second tier, checking all the nooks and crannies that people normally hide in. He’s taller than Longwei, more visible. We all watch as their paths near a point of intersection.
And then Longwei leaps.
His front tuft of hair flops up, and his eyes look wild as he takes flight. Bilal’s hatchets go up, but not quickly enough. The impact jars both weapons from his hands, and he goes stumbling toward the edge of the second tier. Before he can recover, Longwei plants a kick into his lower back and Bilal flies. We all gasp as he goes over the edge. The angle’s all wrong as he juts out a leg just before impact. My stomach pinwheels when the bone snaps clean in two. Bilal collapses in a blooming red puddle. We all stare at the very, very white bone that’s slit upward through his black suit. The sight is enough to turn us all inside out.
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